List of Lists

Stateless Nations

This countdown
list, of nations and peoples fighting
for independence or just for their very existence,
is selected on the basis of variety and interest. So while some may
be pressing cases and deserving of the world's attention, others are
untroubling or else irretrievable lost causes. Like, I'm afraid, my
Number One stateless nation, down the bottom.

10 Scotland

I thought
I should start off the list with an example of a nation which is trying
to do it politely. There are no terrorists/freedom fighters to speak
of, unless you count the football supporters at Scotland-England matches.
There is a Scottish National Party campaigning for full independence,
but it seems as if most Scots are happy with the status quo,
especially since some of the most visible symbols of the new Scotland,
like the new Parliament, have been outrageous examples of scandalous overspending and mismanagement. The English are very
fond of the Scots in a patronising sort of way, and have done very well
out of Scotland's oil.

9 Chiapas

I'm not
really sure what this should call itself. Or whether the people(s) concerned
consider themselves distinct ethnically or politically. Chiapas is the
most South-Eastern of Mexico's states, and does have a high proportion
of Mexico's indigenous peoples, still retaining traditional
culture to some extent. If you've heard of it, it's because of the activities
of the political movement of these dispossessed peoples, fighting for
their land and rights. I don't know how successful they will be, because
all over Latin America the descendants of the Spanish have remained
very much at the top of the social pyramid, and their armies and police
have been as brutal as required to keep it that way. My feelings are
mixed. The thing is, suppose those peoples and tribes unite and achieve
some autonomy; how distinct will they be, culturally? They possess a
myriad of languages, some related to those of the Aztecs
and Mayans, some not at all. But between themselves, they use Spanish...
shrug.

8 Tibet

When you
learn about Tibet, and about the Dalai Lama, you can't help but feel
a rising anger at what the Chinese got away with when they invaded in
the Fifties. Worse, really, is what they continue to do now, which is
cultural genocide. They have a programme of immigration designed to ensure that the Tibetans will become a minority in their
own land. Lhasa the capital is now a Han Chinese city, and expressions
of Tibetan culture and religion are oppressed and marginalised.
The Chinese despise Western attitudes like I've just given you. They
argue that (1) Tibet was always part of China. No, it wasn't, it was
a tributary state in medieval times, which is another thing entirely,
and anyway, we're supposed to be against colonialism now, and you couldn't
describe what China has done to Tibet in any other way. (2) The Chinese
argue that Tibet was a primitive feudal land, and they
are a modernising force. To be honest, this has some validity, when
one looks at the existence of ordinary Tibetans from old accounts. However,
nothing the Dalai Lama has said suggests anything other than that he
is a man who would have gently led his people along a path into the
modern world, if given the chance. The Tibetans had the right to choose
for themselves, and not to have their identity obliterated forcefully.

7 Chechnya

I thought
I should pick one of the difficult cases. Of a country it's very hard
for most of us to sympathise with, after the incidents of shocking
terrorism which have been perpetrated in the name of Chechnyan
independence. It's natural to find it hard to witness what happened
in that school, and balance it with the facts of history. But maybe
we should, because history explains it. The Russians did invade and
colonise, and Stalin even sent the whole Chechen population away into
Central Asia for a while, but the Chechens have never given up their
right to independence. It's awkward for us, because we in the West haven't
wanted to alienate the Russians. If only they'd defined Chechnya as
an S.S.R. like Georgia, Armenia etc., then there'd be no problem, Chechnya
would have been out of their hair like all the rest back in the early
90s. But it was deemed an A.S.S.R. ie. 'part of Russia'. So for the
Russians, letting Chechnya go would be to invite the dissolution of
Russia itself. They're wrong, in my judgement, there are many reasons
for seeing Chechnya as a very special case. But... oh yes, there's oil.

6 Artsakh

Where?
Ah, you probably know this as Nagorno Karabagh. This is another example
of the trouble caused by empires drawing arbitrary lines on the map.
This flag (right) is the same as the flag of the Republic of
Armenia, with the addition of the white detail. It emphasises the fact
that here is an example of a pseudo state which actually doesn't
want to be independent at all, but which can't openly unite
with Armenia for political reasons. See how the flag distinguishes a
separate segment of Armenia on the right hand side? It's an ethnically
Armenian region, going right back into history, East of the official
Republic of Armenia. It was always autonomous, but officially made part
of Azerbaijan, to avoid antagonising the Turkic Azeris. When the Soviet
Union started to unravel, they voted to join up with Armenia, resulting
in carnage amongst Armenians living in Baku the Azeri capital. To be
blunt, the Turks have not shaken off their hatred of the Armenians going
back to their 1915 genocide of them. The Armenians have since fought
to win the territory but this remains unrecognised by anyone. The Azeris have, yes, you guessed it, oil.

5 Kurdistan

I'm afraid
the Turks are going to be mentioned again in this one. For many, the
Kurds would be Number One in this list, because they are famously the
world's most numerous people without a state or homeland. Currently,
the nearest thing they have to it is their autonomous region in Northern
Iraq (and it's Iraq which shouldn't exist, it only came into being so
Britain and France could protect their oil interests). And that could
well be crushed when the Americans go, by the Turks and the Arabs. The
Kurds did briefly create a 'state' 1920-ish, but they were the victims
of a four-way carve up between Turkey, Iran, Syria
and Iraq. I did mention oil, didn't I?

4 Hawaii

At which
all Americans are no doubt outraged. Well, we the British have some
blame, as the Hawaiian state flag shows, with its inset Union flag.
However, what the Americans did, at the height of their late 19th Century
expansion into the Pacific, was nothing less than a land grabbing coup.
The Hawaiians were politically weak. It's hard to imagine any independence
now, most native Hawaiians can see they do quite well out of being Americans,
but there has been some cultural revival, and one might
imagine some future assertion of autonomy on one of the smaller Hawaiian
islands... nah, maybe not.

3 Euzkerra

To be honest,
a major problem the Basques have is that people are probably bored with
hearing about them. They have tried to make a comparison with the struggles
of the I.R.A., but they don't have a Basque constituency working for
them in other countries, and really, they are a different case. I think
their main difficulty was that there never was a Basque nation state
as such. But they have maintained their uniqueness to an impressive degree, if one looks back to how they remained apart
from the Indo-European invasion which swamped all the other languages
of prehistoric Europe. They have a fascinating history, for instance
in the voyages of their fishermen. I can't help but feel sympathy for
a group such as theirs, which has been on the receiving end of so much
arrogance and oppression as displayed by Imperial and then Fascist Spain.
Remember Guernica. And don't forget that a large chunk
of their land is in France - yes, like the Kurds, they were the victims
of a carve up.

2 Karens

The Karens
are a people of Eastern and Southern Burma. This is a tale of imperialism,
and I'm afraid another one for the British to feel shame faced about.
Not that we ever gave the Karens a hard time, but as so often, we took
them for granted - they gave important and loyal support to us in the
war against Japan - and then we neglected them. They wanted some independence
at the end of the war, but we ignored them and left them to the less
than tender mercies of the Burmese. So what makes them different from
many other tribal groups? Just that they maintained 'statehood' to a
great degree for a very long time. They even had a properly
uniformed army. What brought thewhole thing down, apart from
the lack of support from anywhere else, was the discovery of, no, not
oil, but gas, in the Southern panhandle. At last the
Burmese Army had the motivation to go in in earnest. Any independent
Karens now live a precarious existence in refugee camps on the Thai border. Even if Burma ever shakes off its present hideous
military government, it's hard to imagine the Karens could now revive
their national aspirations.

1 Araucania

I bet this
is the one most people reading this would draw the biggest blank on.
Well, Araucania was the 19th Century name for the kingdom of the Mapuche people of South America. Their home territory is the Southern end of
the Andes. They're interesting historically because unlike almost every
other indigenous nation of the Americas they tried to do the nation
state thing on our terms. They made a treaty with Spain in 1641. They
declared a border, on the Bio Bio River in what is now Chile, held off
the Spanish for a long time, and even copied the European habit of importing
a royal family wholesale and setting up a court. Unfortunately the Spanish
(by now, we're talking about the Chileans and the Argentinians) had never taken any native government seriously and weren't going to start
now. They seized a military opportunity and quashed the would-be state
in 1885. The entirely non-Mapuche Araucanian royal family swanned around
the more decadent saloons of Europe for a generation or two until giving
up the farce. These days, the Mapuche are working to recover some identity,
but whether it'll be enough to stop their language and other crucial
cultural characteristics from disappearing, I don't know. The Chileans
aren't going to offer any encouragement.

Up
right was the original 19th Century flag of Araucania. This (right)
is the new Mapuche flag:-

And why
are they the Number One in this particular list? Because of the poignancy
of their situation. When one looks at the European conquest of the Americas,
it's a bit miserable that none of the indigenous states and empires
could assert themselves. Here was one which tried to do it in a way
we'd recognise, and their failure exposes the lie we sold them
about how to be 'civilised'. There isn't a single state in
North or South America ruled by its indigenous peoples. And when globalisation
smothers even their native tongues, we won't really notice will we?

There isn't
actually any real right of self-determination at all,
is there?

4
December 2004

Links

I'm sure you realise that websites devoted to the causes of some of these forlorn hopes come and go like ghosts. You're best off doing a search, really. But, based on the last time I did that myself, and with no promises that these still exist, here are some to get you started:-